by Tony Curtis
Soon after I started dating Janet, Universal finally decided to give me my first starring role. The movie was a swashbuckler called The Prince Who Was a Thief, a sand-and-tits movie where they dressed me up in tights, gave me a scimitar, and asked me to run through harems of scantily clad girls. The studio had decided to promote me as the new Douglas Fairbanks, an idea that thrilled me. I could ride a horse or swing on a rope, and I could fence with the best of them.
However, it soon became obvious that the studio didn’t just want me to be a swashbuckler like Fairbanks; they wanted to pair me with my female lead as a boy-girl team, both off and on screen, much the way Fairbanks had been paired with Mary Pickford. For the female lead in The Prince Who Was a Thief, Universal cast Piper Laurie, an eighteen-year-old actress who had just signed a contract with the studio the year before. She’d caught the eye of Bob Goldstein, the head of casting, and they had started dating; her contract soon followed.
Once Piper and I had been cast, the studio kept arranging for us to go out on dates. They wanted us to be seen going to parties together so that when they announced the making of the film, we would generate more publicity.
Even if Piper and I had been attracted to each other, there was little chance that anything would have come of it, because they never left us alone. But I didn’t find her attractive at all. I never understood what Bob Goldstein saw in her. She was an unpleasant person, very suspicious of everybody. She reminded me of some of the girls I knew back in New York. She was a willful, headstrong person who did things her own way, regardless of the outcome. For instance, after the makeup artist finished getting Piper ready for her shots for the day, she’d go to the set, duck behind a bookcase or a dresser, open up her own makeup box, and completely redo her face.
When the crew looked at the rushes the next day, the head of the camera department would ask, “What is that dark shading over her eyes? That looks terrible.” They’d look at the scene again and again, wondering what was wrong, until they figured out what Piper was up to. She was a piece of work.
I loved making The Prince Who Was a Thief. My role was physically demanding, requiring me to do a fair amount of stunt work, including horseback riding and fencing. One month before we started shooting, I took lessons in saber, foil, and épée, and I found that I had an affinity for it. I liked my costumes, and while I may not have been attracted to Piper, she was a very pretty girl, so we made a striking couple onscreen.
The movie cost four hundred thousand dollars to make, which made it a low-budget film. When it went on to gross more than two million dollars, Universal’s executives figured that all they had to do to make a successful movie was put Piper and me in it. My buzz was building, and the studio had its own ideas about how to capitalize on it. The studio’s casting director, Bob Laze, came to see me and said, “If you marry Piper, I can get you a big, fat envelope.” I was confused; wasn’t she Bob Goldstein’s girl? Was this guy going behind Bob’s back? But soon afterward another intermediary, a guy who was close to the casting department, offered me thirty thousand dollars to marry Piper. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Was this Bob’s way of getting rid of her?
The studio kept up the pressure on me to marry Piper. In 1951, thirty thousand dollars was a fortune, and I badly needed the dough. But I was getting more and more serious with Janet. I didn’t know where things were headed between us, but I wasn’t going to walk away from what we had just because someone offered me a big payday.
I was also worried about getting typecast as Piper Laurie’s costar. I could see that the studio was trying to groom me to be the next great screen lover. But what kind of lover was I really? I was a twenty-five-year-old kid just starting out in the movies. The studio pressure, the publicity, and the focus on my personal life—all this craziness really unsettled me, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. And what I really wanted was to be in serious films like Marlon and Jimmy Dean. I didn’t want to be stuck forever doing silly romances that no one would remember a year later.
I have to admit that had I not met Janet, I might have taken the money to marry Piper. It certainly was tempting. And truth be told, I was so broke that if someone had actually riffled the cash money right under my nose, I might have taken it, Janet or no Janet. But no one ever did. And I’m glad they didn’t. I cared more for Janet than I had ever cared for a woman before. I had gotten in pretty deep with Marilyn Monroe, but neither of us had any intention of marrying. We were too young, and too ambitious.
Janet was someone I admired greatly, and I badly wanted her to admire me back. She was better educated than I was, and I was honored that she wanted to spend time with me. I knew that if she married me, it would be for myself, because she was already an established star; it wasn’t as if marrying me was going to do anything for her career. So I turned down Piper and the cash, and I held out for Janet.
Still, I had never felt so pushed and pulled in my life: dating Janet, being on tour, seeing those screaming girls night after night, and turning down wads of cash to marry Piper. Only one choice seemed to make any sense in all this madness—to marry Janet Leigh. In the middle of the tour, I decided to do it. I knew I was bucking the studio, but I reminded myself that I’d been able to make it past all of Janet’s former suitors, including Arthur Loews Jr. and Howard Hughes, and that made me feel super human.
I called Janet and proposed to her over the phone. She said yes, and we arranged for her to come and meet me in New York City, where we would get married. The evening before the wedding, Jerry Lewis cornered me. He and Dean were in New York doing their act. Jerry said, “What are you doing? Are you nuts? Getting married will kill your career. Don’t do that.” I liked Jerry, but I ignored his advice.
Then Leonard Goldstein—Bob’s brother, and the head of Universal—called me later that evening and told me that as far as Universal was concerned, they thought it would be best if Janet and I didn’t get married. “You have a big career in front of you,” Leonard said. “Don’t blow it.” He’d slightly changed his tune, from “Marry Piper” to “Don’t marry Janet,” but as far as I was concerned it was still bullshit. Why didn’t they want me to marry Janet? Because she was under contract to a rival studio, MGM. Meanwhile, Janet was getting the same kind of pressure from MGM and from her father, who didn’t want to lose his meal ticket.
That night I called Janet, which was probably a mistake because I was angry and confused by the pressure I was getting. She was staying at another hotel in New York, getting ready for the wedding the next day. While we were talking, I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t get married,” and Janet said, “That’s fine, because I don’t want to marry you either.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, but the line had already gone dead. A few minutes later I got her back on the phone, apologized, and begged her to marry me. We talked for an hour and patched things up, regaining the perspective we’d lost when so many obstacles were set in our way.
Despite all the warnings and the naysayers, Janet and I were married one day after my birthday, on June 4, 1951, in the country outside New York City. Jerry Lewis was the best man (he’d quickly come around after that phone call), and our wedding was a lot of fun. We had a wonderful dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, a trendy New York restaurant.
Shortly afterward, the studio sent Piper and me on a promotional tour for The Prince Who Was a Thief, which included Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. I would walk out onto the stage, and the girls in the audience would scream. It happened in every city. It was nuts. I couldn’t believe that I could generate that kind of response after nothing but bit parts and one starring role. Sometimes, when my success seemed overwhelming, I found some sanity by asking myself, What is it about me that creates this kind of reaction? It could only be my looks. None of those screaming girls knew anything about my personality, that was for sure. What they were infatuated by had very little to do with me.
Piper was unhappy because the publicity about my wedding was eclipsin
g news about the movie. For the remainder of the tour there was a lot of friction between Piper and me. She may also have resented my refusal to marry her, although I don’t know whether she even knew about the studio’s proposal to me.
After the tour I flew back to LA, to my new home with Janet. I loved the idea of being married to her, although married life itself took some getting used to.
I would be lying on the couch at home, and she would ask me, “Can I get you something?”
I’d say, “Please, may I have a glass of water?” She’d bring it, and I’d say, “Thank you, my darling girl.”
“You’re welcome, you wonderful man.”
I’d take a sip and put the glass down on the coffee table, and then Janet would come back, take the glass away, and pour it out in the kitchen sink.
“Sweetheart,” I’d say a few minutes later, “why did you take my water away?”
“I thought you were done, darling.” That’s how I found out how compulsively neat Janet was. Nothing could be out of place when she was around. Whenever she had to travel somewhere I would marvel at how she was able to fit so many items into one suitcase, every item fitting snugly into its compartment; and she always knew exactly where everything was!
I once asked her mother, “Where did Janet learn to pack like that?”
“She has always packed like that,” her mother said. “She packs like the inside of a body.” I looked, and sure enough, there was the stomach, there was the liver, there were the lungs, everything touching each other, stockings rolled up, nothing out of place. At home, not only was the laundry done, it was always ironed, folded, and put away. The house was impeccable. It was an attractive environment to live in, although sometimes Janet’s insistence that everything be in its place made me a little edgy.
Piper and I had been a sensation in The Prince Who Was a Thief, and Universal wanted more of a good thing, so we costarred in the next two movies we made. The first one was called No Room for the Groom. Perhaps Universal had this movie in mind when they offered me that envelope full of cash, because the plot revolved around our getting married, my going into the Army, and my coming back to find my wife had filled our home with all her relatives. My problem now (in the movie) was to find a way to get the relatives out of the house so I could enjoy some conjugal relations instead. Things worked out okay on screen, but off screen I still didn’t enjoy dealing with Piper’s resentment. If anything, it had gotten worse, so making this movie was just torture.
To capitalize further on The Prince Who Was a Thief, Universal put us in another sand-and-tits movie called Son of Ali Baba. Piper played an escaped slave who took shelter under my roof. This movie provided another opportunity for me to run around bare-chested in pajama bottoms with a turban around my head. Part of the fun of working on that movie was getting to spend a lot of time with Davy Sharpe, the stuntman who was my stand-in. Over his career, Davy appeared in more than forty-five hundred films—no one knows the exact number—which means he may have appeared in more films than anyone else in U.S. film history. His first film appearance was as a double to Douglas Fairbanks in the movie The Thief of Bagdad, when Davy was only fourteen. In this movie, Davy and I would go out onto the back lot almost every day so he could spend some time training me in horseback riding, fencing, jumping, and tumbling. He taught me how to fall so my shoulders and upper body cushioned the blow, rather than landing directly on my feet, which could cause permanent damage.
Davy was twenty years older than I was, in his forties, but he was a superb athlete. He could take off his hat and fling it up in the air without looking at it, and it would always land on his head. When Davy was rehearsing, he always had a cigar in his mouth, and he could throw the cigar up in the air and catch that between his teeth. One time early in his career, a director filmed a rehearsal scene without telling him, and Davy vowed never to let that happen again. That was why he always kept a cigar in his mouth during rehearsal. He knew the director would ask him to take the cigar out when it was time to roll film. Davy was always upbeat, and a joy to be around. His signature line was “I greet you with cordiality and good cheer.”
Son of Ali Baba was the movie where I gave a line that people unjustly made fun of for years afterward. There’s a scene where I’m on horseback and Piper is sitting next to me, and I say to her, “Yonder in the valley of the sun is my father’s castle.” After the film came out, Debbie Reynolds, who would later marry Eddie Fisher, went on television and said, “Did you see the new guy in the movies? They call him Tony Curtis, but that’s not his real name. In his new movie he’s got a hilarious line where he says, ‘Yonder lies the castle of my fodda.’”
You could chalk her ridicule up to my New York accent, but when she mentioned the issue of my real name on television, I began to wonder if there was something anti-Semitic going on there. I’m probably just hypersensitive on that topic. But either way, she got the line wrong! Unfortunately, her version stuck with the public, and for a while it became popular for people to quote the incorrect line in a ridiculous New York accent.
Years later, Hugh Hefner came up to me at a party and said, “Yonder lies the castle of my fodda.”
I looked at him coolly. “Hef, I never said that.”
“Then don’t tell anybody,” he said. “It makes a great movie story.”
After starring in No Room for the Groom and Son of Ali Baba, I was on the cover of all the movie magazines, but even that didn’t lead to the big break I was looking for. Being in those desert movies gave me my first leading roles, but it also reinforced a certain impression of me that I couldn’t shake for a long time.
In the fall of 1952 I met the producer/director George Pal, who was Hungarian, like me; his real name was Julius György Märczincsák. George offered me the lead role in the movie Houdini. I absolutely loved the idea. A Hungarian Jew as an escape artist! What an incredible role. And George really wanted me. “Tony,” he said, “I’m not going to make the picture without you.” But we had a problem: this was a Paramount picture, and I was under contract to Universal. Actors sometimes got their studios to let them do “outside pictures,” as they were called, but to get the studio to do you this favor, you had to be able to pull some big strings, and I just didn’t have enough leverage to make that happen.
Then Lew Wasserman, the head of the MCA talent agency, interceded. I had met Lew through Jay Kanter, Marlon’s agent, who also worked at MCA. Jay and I were great friends, so when I told Jay my situation with George, he said, “Let me introduce you to Lew.” I had heard all about Lew; he was legendary, a man who could do more than just put picture deals together. When Jimmy Stewart signed to star in Winchester ’73, Lew had made a deal that gave Jimmy a chunk of the profits rather than a flat salary. It was a deal that would change the balance of power in Hollywood, making actors the most important players in the movie business instead of just paid employees.
Jay took me to Palm Springs to meet Lew. I didn’t have an agent at the time, so I asked him, “Will you handle me?” He said yes, so I signed an agency contract with MCA, and in that moment everything changed for me. With Lew Wasserman as my mentor, doors opened at the slightest touch. In those days, Lew was the most intelligent man in the movie industry; it wasn’t even close. Lew Wasserman was so good that MGM wanted him to sell his agency and take over the studio. They sent him a blank piece of paper and said, “This is your contract. You write in whatever numbers you want. Just run the studio.” But he turned the studio down. He said he couldn’t just walk out on all the actors who depended on him for a living. He was the most honorable guy I ever knew.
Lew and I became great friends. I spent a lot of time with him, and Janet and I were invited over for dinners at his home in Palm Springs.
One day Lew said to me, “I’ve got something for you, Tony, but you’ll have to pay for it.” I couldn’t imagine what it was, but he certainly had my full attention. Lew took me down to the basement of a private parking garage, and there was a gleaming,
new, silver Rolls-Royce convertible with black upholstery. I had told Lew about my love of cars, especially how much I loved the Rolls-Royce, and Lew had gone out and bought the car for me. His partner owned a big car dealership in St. Louis, so Lew was able to get the car for a terrific price: seven thousand dollars. That was a lot of money in those days, but the list price was more than three times that much.
Janet was also one of Lew’s clients. Aware of how well my career was going, Lew decided to pair Janet up with me in the Houdini movie. If the studio wanted me (and Lew knew they did), they had to take Janet. For this deal, we were a matched pair. I was thrilled for Janet and happy to have her play my wife in the picture, but I wasn’t so sure this was the best thing for my own career. My concern was that I was running into a Douglas Fairbanks–Mary Pickford pairing all over again, only this time with Janet instead of Piper. I loved Janet, and I wanted the best for her, but I hoped that somewhere down the line I could make an important picture of my own.
Preparations for Houdini proceeded. When I told the people in the Paramount wardrobe department that my father was a tailor, they told me he could have a job there if he wanted it. My father had already gotten a job clipping articles for Warren Cowet, who was handling my press, but here was a chance for him to work as a tailor again. When Paramount gave me the good news, I immediately ran for the phone to tell my father. But as I was crossing the soundstage, I slipped on a cable and tore all the ligaments in my right knee. The pain was unbelievable, but I just had the knee taped, and we forged ahead. I didn’t even think about holding up production while I recovered. (By the way, if you watch Houdini closely, you can see me limping a bit.)